Mackenzie the Magnificent
by Mertiya
Summary: [movieverse] “I did think that perhaps the police would harm or kill an innocent civilian wearing my mask, and that he would become the rallying cry of the revolution. But I never imagined that it would be a child.” V, in Mackenzie the Magnificent.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own V for Vendetta or any of the characters herein. I own Mackenzie's name. That's it.

**A/N**: I was very intrigued by one of the minor characters when I watched V for Vendetta, and this is the result. Hope you enjoy!

**Mackenzie the Magnificent**

Mackenzie Reid was lost, confused, and a little scared. She was standing in the midst of a vast, grey, featureless fog. Someone else had been there, but he hadn't stayed very long. He had blood on his head and hands, and Mackenzie hid from him. He scared her; she wasn't entirely sure why, but he did.

That made her angry. Mackenzie hated being frightened. She was ten years old and a budding revolutionary, not some scaredy-cat kid who ran from her own shadow. She had decided when she hit seven years old that she was never going to be pretty. Therefore, she decided, she'd have to be smart or brave. Since what the schools taught was a load of propaganda (there was a better word for it, but her mum would wash her mouth out with soap if she used it), and since most other sources of learning were banned, she decided to make herself brave.

She practiced fighting and martial arts for hours and watched scary movies whenever they came on TV (even though they were usually pretty stupid) and read her dad's old comics he kept hidden from the government. She picked up spiders and bugs and mice whenever she had the chance, and although she was nervous at first, decided after a short time they were really pretty interesting. She also climbed up trees and rooftops till she nearly scared her mother into fits and did all sorts of other daredevil stunts, till at ten, she decided she wasn't half-bad when it came to bravery.

So there was a good reason she didn't like hiding and being scared. It made her feel like a failure.

But for some reason, she was scared of that man. He had a nasty face. And then some shadowy, formless--_things_--had risen up from the ground and dragged him down through the fog as he screamed. Ugh. Mackenzie was trying not to be scared of those _things_ either, but there was also a reason she was sitting on a rock with her feet drawn up under her.

And then several other people had shown up; she'd seen their forms through the fog. First one person, then seven or eight, then one again, but further away. She hadn't quite seen what happened to them but suspected the _things_ had something to do with it.

She frowned, trying once again to piece together what had happened to her. She had been imitating her hero, V. Well, why not? He'd sent everyone masks for Guy Fawkes Day, and he was going to blow up the houses of parliament and topple the government--and he needed her help! _Her_--Mackenzie! It was _so_ brilliant! Well, he needed everybody's help, _obviously_, but she was _part_ of everybody, wasn't she?

Anyway, she had gone out wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and spray-painted 'V' onto a bunch of walls--and then--and then--she just couldn't remember. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to. She had a feeling it had to do with the guy who'd appeared here just after she had.

Suddenly, another someone appeared, a dark shape through the fog. Mackenzie swallowed. She didn't move. This time, however, the person wasn't immediately grabbed and dragged away, and she gathered up her courage and walked toward him. As the curling vapors of the fog cleared back, she saw the form of a tall man in a black cloak and wide-brimmed hat, standing with his back to her.

"Um--excuse me?" Mackenzie tugged at the cloak. The man whirled around and suddenly there was a sword pointed at Mackenzie's throat and she was staring up into the smiling face of a Guy Fawkes mask. "Mr. V?" she asked in awe, totally disregarding the sword.

He looked at her and abruptly his arm dropped. "My dear child, forgive me," he said. "I had no idea--"

"No, that's okay! Is it really you, Mr. V?"

A slight nod. "It is I."

"Gosh. Just…wow. That's so amazing. What are you doing here? I'm kinda wondering what I'm doing here as well."

"I--do not exactly know what I am doing here, or you, especially. It does not seem a fitting place for a martyr."

"A martyr? Who's a martyr?"

A soft chuckle. "Why, you, my dear. May I inquire your sobriquet?"

"My name? It's Mackenzie. But I'm not a martyr. I mean, that's like Joan of Arc, right? To be a martyr, you have to be--"

_She had been running, running and giggling with the fun of getting away with all of this because of a mask. Then there had been a man, shouting at her to stop. She'd stuck her tongue out at him, forgetting for a moment he couldn't see her and kept running, swirling out her cloak as she ran. A loud bang rang suddenly in her ears, and something punched her in the gut. She toppled to the ground, a sharp pain in her stomach, like the time she'd had appendicitis and Mum had had to drive her to the hospital. She heard shouts and screams and footsteps, felt fingers at the chin of her mask, about to lift it off, but she never saw who it was. Everything had melted out, and then she had appeared here._

"--dead." She looked down at her pink T-shirt. There was a neat hole in the middle of it and a splash of red fading to brown around it. She pulled it up, and her tummy looked okay underneath. "Oh," she said limply. "_Oh_."

"I'm sorry, Mackenzie. I, at least, was expecting to die."

"Why did you call me a martyr?"

"Because you are a martyr, Mackenzie."

"What do you mean?"

"In a very few minutes, a huge crowd will arrive at the Houses of Parliament to watch a show of lights. Many of them--perhaps the majority of them--will be there in honor of you."

"_Me_! But why?"

The porcelain face turned away for an instant, and then V knelt in front of her, bringing his face close to hers. "Mackenzie, you must believe that I did not intend this when I sent you that mask. I did think--and it may have been wrong; it probably was, in fact--I did think that perhaps the police would harm or even kill an innocent civilian wearing my mask, and that they would become the rallying cry of the revolution. But I never imagined--or intended--that it should be a child."

She stared at him, confused. Her hero was kneeling at her feet.

"Can you forgive me?"

He was asking _her_ to forgive _him_. Like it was his fault.

"Um, yeah. I mean, I was being stupid, too. I know you gave me the mask, but I didn't have to go out and get myself killed in it. But how do you know?"

As V began to speak, a picture started to form in the fog, apparently painted by his words. Both of them stared at it for an instant, and then V continued, shrugging, as if it was only to be expected in whatever this place was.

_I first saw a news reel._

"In a shocking turn of events," said the blond-haired, weasel-faced newsman Mackenzie usually didn't bother watching, so didn't know the name of. "A mob incited to violence by the thought of more terrorist activity killed a ten-year-old girl named Mackenzie Reid, who was apparently playing in a Guy Fawkes mask, and an undercover policeman named Jordon Howell, who was attempting to protect her. Police are attempting to trace the mob, but so far have had no luck."

_I knew, of course, that nothing could be further from the truth. I knew then that you were my martyr, and I felt shocked, horrified and guilty. As I said, I had never intended a child to be harmed. So I went to find out what had really happened._

A plump housewife, shaking her head and looking distraught. Mackenzie recognized her as Mrs. Adams of the flat below. "Oh, sir, it were the most awful thing," she was exclaiming, dabbing her eyes on her apron. "I would be careful if I was you, sir, wearin' that mask. Those fingermen'll shoot you down as soon as look at you, as they did to pore young Mackenzie Reid. She was out playin', wearing a cloak and a Guy Fawkes mask, as children do, you know, sir. Wearing her pink T-shirt and her glasses over her mask, it was obvious she was no terrorist. Well, that fingerman just up and shot her. I saw her, as I was coming home from my way to the grocery store, lying there in the street with her face all frozen-like and all her blood spilled on the pavement around her. They killed the fingerman that done it, but what I say is, it's not going to bring the pore child back, is it, sir? But I tell you, I'll be showin' up at the Houses of Parliament tonight, no question. The government needs to learn they can't just go about shooting down pore innocent children."

_As I left and headed for my home once more, with a heavy heart, to await the coming evening, I saw your parents, Mackenzie._

It was Dad! And Mum! And Dad was carrying--Mackenzie, her head lolling limply backward over his arm.

"He said I was too heavy to carry," she whispered, awe-struck.

_No child is too heavy a weight under the circumstances_.

Her parents looked awful. There was sticky blood all over Dad's sweater, and Mum was sobbing noisily. Silent tears streamed down Dad's face, too.

"Look at what they did to her!" he was screaming to the whole world. "Look at what those damn fingermen and their goddamned government did to my Mackenzie! Look! Just look at her!"

The vision faded out.

"Gosh, I feel rotten about Mum and Dad," Mackenzie said, feeling her throat choke up too.

"It was my fault, Mackenzie. You were not to blame."

"No. You're the freedom fighter, V. You're--you're my _hero_. My _hero_."

She was still awed that she was actually talking to him.

"I do not deserve such praise, but thank you, Mackenzie. It means a great deal to me."

Suddenly, the fog was curling back to show a doorway, a doorway through which could be seen the dark cobblestones of London, the dim lights reflecting off the Thames, though which could be heard the tramp of hundreds--no, thousands--of feet.

A wave of excitement washed through Mackenzie. "What is it?" she gasped, running toward it. V was just behind her, his long, purposeful strides easily catching up to her. "I think we've been given a chance to see how it all ends…and how it begins anew. The death of an old regime--the birth of a new country. Come, Mackenzie."

She didn't need any urging. She was through the doorway in a second and found herself at the back of the marching crowd, a Guy Fawkes mask covering her face. Beside her marched the tall, almost regal form of V. There were other people trickling out of doorways, too, all of them wearing Guy Fawkes masks. One of them was a little boy; his mask slipped, and as he tugged it back into position, Mackenzie caught a glimpse of a pale, thin face and a charming smile.

They marched, in rhythm, as the strains of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture wafted through the chill night air. They came to the guards stationed outside, and, miraculously, the guards dispersed, fading away like smoke before a summer breeze. They stood, for a few, shivering minutes, waiting, silent, watching. Then came the fireworks, bursting into the air like beautiful and terrible flowers, their fiery petals glowing with harsh light, as Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament followed the Old Bailey into the realms of memory, their ashes floating down to land in the illuminated Thames.

A wave rippled across the crowd, a wave of emotion, and one by one, masks were doffed, a row at a time, as if each person were a domino, and the removal of the mask was like the falling of the dominos. Finally, it reached Mackenzie, and she reached up and plucked off the mask and dropped it and gazed upward. V's voice murmured in her ear, once more, "The death of an old regime…the birth of a new country…"

Mackenzie laughed out loud through tears and took the hand of the little boy beside her. She smiled at him. "Are you alive?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I was one of the first victims of St. Mary's virus," he said. "I miss my sister, Evey. She's alive."

"So are my mum and dad," sighed Mackenzie. Tendrils of grey mist snaked out around them. "I guess we have to go back. To the misty place."

"I've already been there," said the boy. "I'll see you when you get beyond it." He and Mackenzie took a step backward and the pressure of his hand on hers faded. She was standing in the grey place with V once again.

She sniffed. "Gosh. That was so amazing."

"It was. Indeed, it was," V said softly. She saw a drop of water leak from beneath his mask and fall to the ground. What was that? V couldn't be crying, could he?

"Mr. V? Are you okay?"

"Yes, Mackenzie, I am. I do not think I quite believed it until--until I saw it. We have done it. We succeeded. We toppled the tyrant. Is it not wonderful?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." She grinned at him.

Suddenly, another door appeared. A blinding light shone out from it. "Hey, look, Mr. V, I think that's for us."

"I think it's for _you_, Mackenzie." There was a queer expression in V's voice.

"No, it's for _us_. You're _V_."

"I am not as great as you think I am, Mackenzie."

"I _do_ think you're great, Mr. V. And I bet they'll take the word of a martyr for it wherever we're going."

"I believe they would, Mackenzie. But--there is someone I need to wait for, and I think I deserve to stay here for awhile longer."

"Well, if you're sure you won't be too bored--I'll come visit if I can. Promise."

"I know, Mackenzie."

He touched her hand lightly. "And--thank you."

"For what?"

"Just--thank you."

Mackenzie smiled at him again and stepped toward the light. "Bye!" she called as she stepped through. V waved and sighed. Then he turned and began pacing. It was going to be a long wait, but he deserved it--and it would certainly be worth it. Oh, yes, it would be worth it. _Evey, I miss you...and I'm sorry.  
_

_Fin._


End file.
